Two Santa Ana women who regularly monitor federal immigration raids in Orange County remained in jail Thursday after police arrested them on suspicion of stalking a pair of off-duty ICE agents, authorities said.
Adeline Tonoco, 33, and Madison Crabill, 25, were arrested Wednesday afternoon on suspicion of stalking, obstructing a peace officer and criminal conspiracy, according to a spokeswoman from the Santa Ana Police Department.
An attorney representing one of the women strongly disputed the allegations that any laws were broken since it’s not illegal to monitor law enforcement activity without intent to cause harm.
On Wednesday afternoon, the women allegedly trailed a black SUV with tinted windows from a federal building in Santa Ana until it came to a stop outside of Santa Ana Police Department headquarters, according to the police account.
Around 1:30 p.m., agents inside the vehicle had already requested assistance from police, reporting the pair had followed them.
“The individuals blocked the agents’ vehicle in an alley before continuing to follow them towards the SAPD station,” said Natalie Garcia, a police spokesperson. “While en route, they reportedly drove erratically and ran two red lights to maintain contact with the agents’ vehicle.
“When the agents arrived in front of the station, the individuals parked directly behind them and used a megaphone to yell obscenities at them.”
Garcia said the arrests followed an investigation prompted by safety concerns raised by the agents, who said they recognized the women from an immigration enforcement assignment earlier that day in La Habra. The agents by then were off duty.
Sean Garcia-Leys, an attorney representing Tonoco, disputes the grounds for his client’s arrest.
“Without a threat of harm, it’s not stalking,” he said. “You are allowed to follow somebody if you are not going to harm that person. In this case, the reason was to warn people about ICE activity and to monitor government officials. This doesn’t come close to meeting the definition of stalking under the statute.”
Tonoco volunteers with the OC Rapid Response Network, which documents local Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Border Patrol activities. Crabill is an activist with Lucha Orange, a group that monitors The Home Depot for immigration enforcement.
Casey Conway, OC Rapid Response Network’s director of organizing and development, reviewed video one of the ICE watchers recorded of the encounter in the alley.
“I could not interpret any sense of the agents being blocked in at all from the video,” Conway said. “The agents stepped out of their vehicle and meandered around. They were unmasked, but they had law enforcement belts. One of them, you can clearly see, had a gun.”
TimesOC has not reviewed the video.
The arrests come as ICE watchers remain vigilant about Trump administration efforts ramp up immigration arrests ahead of the midterm elections.
Santa Ana is Orange County’s sole “sanctuary city” and affirms state law forbidding local police cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. Wednesday’s arrests fall outside of that scope, but remain a cause for concern among some city councilmembers.
“It is bigger than my two constituents being arrested,” said Councilmember Jessie Lopez. “It is about whether a community can hold government accountable without fear and retaliation, without false, inaccurate charges being brought against them, without them being led into a situation that could be considered an ‘ambush’ by their local police department.”
Lopez planned to denounce the arrests and call for the activists’ release at a press conference Thursday afternoon outside of Santa Ana Jail.
Garcia-Leys, who is also the executive director of the Peace and Justice Law Center, criticized police for what he described as a failure to exercise “reasonable caution” in assessing the federal agents’ stated safety concerns before making arrests.
“Lawlessness by ICE agents is not unusual,” Garcia-Leys said. “What is unusual is that if they accused these two women of being an emergency threat to them, then that is criminal swatting.”